OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Target Recognition Algorithm for Monitoring Images in Electric Power Construction Process
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

To enhance precision and comprehensiveness in identifying targets in electric power construction monitoring video, a novel target recognition algorithm utilizing infrared imaging is explored. This algorithm employs a color processing technique based on a local linear mapping method to effectively recolor monitoring images. The process involves three key steps: color space conversion, color transfer, and pseudo-color encoding. It is designed to accentuate targets in the infrared imaging. For the refined identification of these targets, the algorithm leverages a support vector machine approach, utilizing an optimal hyperplane to accurately predict target types. We demonstrate the efficacy of the algorithm, which achieves high target recognition accuracy in both outdoor and indoor electric power construction monitoring scenarios. It maintains a false recognition rate below 3% across various environments.
Task Supportive and Personalized Human-Large Language Model Interaction: A User Study
Venue: arXiv cs.HC 2024
Year: 2024

Large language model (LLM) applications, such as ChatGPT, are a powerful tool for online information-seeking (IS) and problem-solving tasks. However, users still face challenges initializing and refining prompts, and their cognitive barriers and biased perceptions further impede task completion. These issues reflect broader challenges identified within the fields of IS and interactive information retrieval (IIR). To address these, our approach integrates task context and user perceptions into human-ChatGPT interactions through prompt engineering. We developed a ChatGPT-like platform integrated with supportive functions, including perception articulation, prompt suggestion, and conversation explanation. Our findings of a user study demonstrate that the supportive functions help users manage expectations, reduce cognitive loads, better refine prompts, and increase user engagement. This research enhances our comprehension of designing proactive and user-centric systems with LLMs. It offers insights into evaluating human-LLM interactions and emphasizes potential challenges for under served users.
Pushing Boundaries: Mixup's Influence on Neural Collapse
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Mixup is a data augmentation strategy that employs convex combinations of training instances and their respective labels to augment the robustness and calibration of deep neural networks. Despite its widespread adoption, the nuanced mechanisms that underpin its success are not entirely understood. The observed phenomenon of Neural Collapse, where the last-layer activations and classifier of deep networks converge to a simplex equiangular tight frame (ETF), provides a compelling motivation to explore whether mixup induces alternative geometric configurations and whether those could explain its success. In this study, we delve into the last-layer activations of training data for deep networks subjected to mixup, aiming to uncover insights into its operational efficacy. Our investigation, spanning various architectures and dataset pairs, reveals that mixup's last-layer activations predominantly converge to a distinctive configuration different than one might expect. In this configuration, activations from mixed-up examples of identical classes align with the classifier, while those from different classes delineate channels along the decision boundary. Moreover, activations in earlier layers exhibit patterns, as if trained with manifold mixup. These findings are unexpected, as mixed-up features are not simple convex combinations of feature class means (as one might get, for example, by training mixup with the mean squared error loss). By analyzing this distinctive geometric configuration, we elucidate the mechanisms by which mixup enhances model calibration. To further validate our empirical observations, we conduct a theoretical analysis under the assumption of an unconstrained features model, utilizing the mixup loss. Through this, we characterize and derive the optimal last-layer features under the assumption that the classifier forms a simplex ETF.
A self-supervised framework for learning whole slide representations
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

Whole slide imaging is fundamental to biomedical microscopy and computational pathology. Previously, learning representations for gigapixel-sized whole slide images (WSIs) has relied on multiple instance learning with weak labels, which do not annotate the diverse morphologic features and spatial heterogeneity of WSIs. A high-quality self-supervised learning method for WSIs would provide transferable visual representations for downstream computational pathology tasks, without the need for dense annotations. We present Slide Pre-trained Transformers (SPT) for gigapixel-scale self-supervision of WSIs. Treating WSI patches as tokens, SPT combines data transformation strategies from language and vision modeling into a general and unified framework to generate views of WSIs for self-supervised pretraining. SPT leverages the inherent regional heterogeneity, histologic feature variability, and information redundancy within WSIs to learn high-quality whole slide representations. We benchmark SPT visual representations on five diagnostic tasks across three biomedical microscopy datasets. SPT significantly outperforms baselines for histopathologic diagnosis, cancer subtyping, and genetic mutation prediction. Finally, we demonstrate that SPT consistently improves whole slide representations when using off-the-shelf, in-domain, and foundational patch encoders for whole slide multiple instance learning.
SuperBench: Improving Cloud AI Infrastructure Reliability with Proactive Validation
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2024
Year: 2024

Reliability in cloud AI infrastructure is crucial for cloud service providers, prompting the widespread use of hardware redundancies. However, these redundancies can inadvertently lead to hidden degradation, so called "gray failure", for AI workloads, significantly affecting end-to-end performance and concealing performance issues, which complicates root cause analysis for failures and regressions. We introduce SuperBench, a proactive validation system for AI infrastructure that mitigates hidden degradation caused by hardware redundancies and enhances overall reliability. SuperBench features a comprehensive benchmark suite, capable of evaluating individual hardware components and representing most real AI workloads. It comprises a Validator which learns benchmark criteria to clearly pinpoint defective components. Additionally, SuperBench incorporates a Selector to balance validation time and issue-related penalties, enabling optimal timing for validation execution with a tailored subset of benchmarks. Through testbed evaluation and simulation, we demonstrate that SuperBench can increase the mean time between incidents by up to 22.61x. SuperBench has been successfully deployed in Azure production, validating hundreds of thousands of GPUs over the last two years.
Maximizing Consistent Force Output for Shape Memory Alloy Artificial Muscles in Soft Robots
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

Soft robots have immense potential given their inherent safety and adaptability, but challenges in soft actuator forces and design constraints have limited scaling up soft robots to larger sizes. Electrothermal shape memory alloy (SMA) artificial muscles have the potential to create these large forces and high displacements, but consistently using these muscles under a well-defined model, in-situ in a soft robot, remains an open challenge. This article provides a system for maintaining the highest-possible consistent SMA forces, over long lifetimes, by combining a fatigue testing protocol with a supervisory control system for the muscles' internal temperature state. We propose a design of a soft limb with swap-able SMA muscles, and deploy the limb in a blocked-force test to quantify the relationship between the measured maximum force at different temperatures over different lifetimes. Then, by applying an invariance-based control system to maintain temperatures under our long-life limit, we demonstrate consistent high forces in a practical task over hundreds of cycles. The method we developed allows for practical implementation of SMAs in soft robots through characterizing and controlling their behavior in-situ, and provides a method to impose limits that maximize their consistent, repeatable behavior.
Energy-based PINNs for solving coupled field problems: concepts and application to the multi-objective optimal design of an induction heater
Venue: arXiv cs.CE 2024
Year: 2024

Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) are neural networks (NNs) that directly encode model equations, like Partial Differential Equations (PDEs), in the network itself. While most of the PINN algorithms in the literature minimize the local residual of the governing equations, there are energy-based approaches that take a different path by minimizing the variational energy of the model. We show that in the case of the steady thermal equation weakly coupled to magnetic equation, the energy-based approach displays multiple advantages compared to the standard residual-based PINN: it is more computationally efficient, it requires a lower order of derivatives to compute, and it involves less hyperparameters. The analyzed benchmark problems are the single- and multi-objective optimal design of an inductor for the controlled heating of a graphite plate. The optimized device is designed involving a multi-physics problem: a time-harmonic magnetic problem and a steady thermal problem. For the former, a deep neural network solving the direct problem is supervisedly trained on Finite Element Analysis (FEA) data. In turn, the solution of the latter relies on a hypernetwork that takes as input the inductor geometry parameters and outputs the model weights of an energy-based PINN (or ePINN). Eventually, the ePINN predicts the temperature field within the graphite plate.
Towards Chip-in-the-loop Spiking Neural Network Training via Metropolis-Hastings Sampling
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2024
Year: 2024

This paper studies the use of Metropolis-Hastings sampling for training Spiking Neural Network (SNN) hardware subject to strong unknown non-idealities, and compares the proposed approach to the common use of the backpropagation of error (backprop) algorithm and surrogate gradients, widely used to train SNNs in literature. Simulations are conducted within a chip-in-the-loop training context, where an SNN subject to unknown distortion must be trained to detect cancer from measurements, within a biomedical application context. Our results show that the proposed approach strongly outperforms the use of backprop by up to $27\%$ higher accuracy when subject to strong hardware non-idealities. Furthermore, our results also show that the proposed approach outperforms backprop in terms of SNN generalization, needing $>10 \times$ less training data for achieving effective accuracy. These findings make the proposed training approach well-suited for SNN implementations in analog subthreshold circuits and other emerging technologies where unknown hardware non-idealities can jeopardize backprop.
The Effect of Haptic Guidance during Robotic-assisted Motor Training is Modulated by Personality Traits
Venue: arXiv cs.RO 2024
Year: 2024

The provision of robotic assistance during motor training has proven to be effective in enhancing motor learning in some healthy trainee groups as well as patients. Personalizing such robotic assistance can help further improve motor (re)learning outcomes and cater better to the trainee's needs and desires. However, the development of personalized haptic assistance is hindered by the lack of understanding of the link between the trainee's personality and the effects of haptic guidance during human-robot interaction. To address this gap, we ran an experiment with 42 healthy participants who trained with a robotic device to control a virtual pendulum to hit incoming targets either with or without haptic guidance. We found that certain personal traits affected how users adapt and interact with the guidance during training. In particular, those participants with an 'Achiever gaming style' performed better and applied lower interaction forces to the robotic device than the average participant as the training progressed. Conversely, participants with the 'Free spirit game style' increased the interaction force in the course of training. We also found an interaction between some personal characteristics and haptic guidance. Specifically, participants with a higher 'Transformation of challenge' trait exhibited poorer performance during training while receiving haptic guidance compared to an average participant receiving haptic guidance. Furthermore, individuals with an external Locus of Control tended to increase their interaction force with the device, deviating from the pattern observed in an average participant under the same guidance. These findings suggest that individual characteristics may play a crucial role in the effectiveness of haptic guidance training strategies.
A Comparative Analysis of Energy Consumption Between The Widespread Unreal and Unity Video Game Engines
Venue: arXiv cs.SE 2024
Year: 2024

The total energy cost of computing activities is steadily increasing and projections indicate that it will be one of the dominant global energy consumers in the coming decades. However, perhaps due to its relative youth, the video game sector has not yet developed the same level of environmental awareness as other computing technologies despite the estimated three billion regular video game players in the world. This work evaluates the energy consumption of the most widely used industry-scale video game engines: Unity and Unreal Engine. Specifically, our work uses three scenarios representing relevant aspects of video games (Physics, Statics Meshes, and Dynamic Meshes) to compare the energy consumption of the engines. The aim is to determine the influence of using each of the two engines on energy consumption. Our research has confirmed significant differences in the energy consumption of video game engines: 351% in Physics in favor of Unity, 17% in Statics Meshes in favor of Unity, and 26% in Dynamic Meshes in favor of Unreal Engine. These results represent an opportunity for worldwide potential savings of at least 51 TWh per year, equivalent to the annual consumption of nearly 13 million European households, that might encourage a new branch of research on energy-efficient video game engines.
Modelling Human Values for AI Reasoning
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2024
Year: 2024

One of today's most significant societal challenges is building AI systems whose behaviour, or the behaviour it enables within communities of interacting agents (human and artificial), aligns with human values. To address this challenge, we detail a formal model of human values for their explicit computational representation. To our knowledge, this has not been attempted as yet, which is surprising given the growing volume of research integrating values within AI. Taking as our starting point the wealth of research investigating the nature of human values from social psychology over the last few decades, we set out to provide such a formal model. We show how this model can provide the foundational apparatus for AI-based reasoning over values, and demonstrate its applicability in real-world use cases. We illustrate how our model captures the key ideas from social psychology research and propose a roadmap for future integrated, and interdisciplinary, research into human values in AI. The ability to automatically reason over values not only helps address the value alignment problem but also facilitates the design of AI systems that can support individuals and communities in making more informed, value-aligned decisions. More and more, individuals and organisations are motivated to understand their values more explicitly and explore whether their behaviours and attitudes properly reflect them. Our work on modelling human values will enable AI systems to be designed and deployed to meet this growing need.
Optimal estimation of Gaussian (poly)trees
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

We develop optimal algorithms for learning undirected Gaussian trees and directed Gaussian polytrees from data. We consider both problems of distribution learning (i.e. in KL distance) and structure learning (i.e. exact recovery). The first approach is based on the Chow-Liu algorithm, and learns an optimal tree-structured distribution efficiently. The second approach is a modification of the PC algorithm for polytrees that uses partial correlation as a conditional independence tester for constraint-based structure learning. We derive explicit finite-sample guarantees for both approaches, and show that both approaches are optimal by deriving matching lower bounds. Additionally, we conduct numerical experiments to compare the performance of various algorithms, providing further insights and empirical evidence.
pSTL-Bench: A Micro-Benchmark Suite for Assessing Scalability of C++ Parallel STL Implementations
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2024
Year: 2024

Since the advent of parallel algorithms in the C++17 Standard Template Library (STL), the STL has become a viable framework for creating performance-portable applications. Given multiple existing implementations of the parallel algorithms, a systematic, quantitative performance comparison is essential for choosing the appropriate implementation for a particular hardware configuration. In this work, we introduce a specialized set of micro-benchmarks to assess the scalability of the parallel algorithms in the STL. By selecting different backends, our micro-benchmarks can be used on multi-core systems and GPUs. Using the suite, in a case study on AMD and Intel CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs, we were able to identify substantial performance disparities among different implementations, including GCC+TBB, GCC+HPX, Intel's compiler with TBB, or NVIDIA's compiler with OpenMP and CUDA.
Quick-Sort Style Approximation Algorithms for Generalizations of Feedback Vertex Set in Tournaments
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2024
Year: 2024

A feedback vertex set (FVS) in a digraph is a subset of vertices whose removal makes the digraph acyclic. In other words, it hits all cycles in the digraph. Lokshtanov et al. [TALG '21] gave a factor 2 randomized approximation algorithm for finding a minimum weight FVS in tournaments. We generalize the result by presenting a factor $2α$ randomized approximation algorithm for finding a minimum weight FVS in digraphs of independence number $α$; a generalization of tournaments which are digraphs with independence number $1$. Using the same framework, we present a factor $2$ randomized approximation algorithm for finding a minimum weight Subset FVS in tournaments: given a vertex subset $S$ in addition to the graph, find a subset of vertices that hits all cycles containing at least one vertex in $S$. Note that FVS in tournaments is a special case of Subset FVS in tournaments in which $S = V(T)$.
Reconstructing facade details using MLS point clouds and Bag-of-Words approach
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2024
Year: 2024

In the reconstruction of façade elements, the identification of specific object types remains challenging and is often circumvented by rectangularity assumptions or the use of bounding boxes. We propose a new approach for the reconstruction of 3D façade details. We combine MLS point clouds and a pre-defined 3D model library using a BoW concept, which we augment by incorporating semi-global features. We conduct experiments on the models superimposed with random noise and on the TUM-FAÇADE dataset. Our method demonstrates promising results, improving the conventional BoW approach. It holds the potential to be utilized for more realistic facade reconstruction without rectangularity assumptions, which can be used in applications such as testing automated driving functions or estimating façade solar potential.
Diffusion-ES: Gradient-free Planning with Diffusion for Autonomous Driving and Zero-Shot Instruction Following
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2024
Year: 2024

Diffusion models excel at modeling complex and multimodal trajectory distributions for decision-making and control. Reward-gradient guided denoising has been recently proposed to generate trajectories that maximize both a differentiable reward function and the likelihood under the data distribution captured by a diffusion model. Reward-gradient guided denoising requires a differentiable reward function fitted to both clean and noised samples, limiting its applicability as a general trajectory optimizer. In this paper, we propose DiffusionES, a method that combines gradient-free optimization with trajectory denoising to optimize black-box non-differentiable objectives while staying in the data manifold. Diffusion-ES samples trajectories during evolutionary search from a diffusion model and scores them using a black-box reward function. It mutates high-scoring trajectories using a truncated diffusion process that applies a small number of noising and denoising steps, allowing for much more efficient exploration of the solution space. We show that DiffusionES achieves state-of-the-art performance on nuPlan, an established closed-loop planning benchmark for autonomous driving. Diffusion-ES outperforms existing sampling-based planners, reactive deterministic or diffusion-based policies, and reward-gradient guidance. Additionally, we show that unlike prior guidance methods, our method can optimize non-differentiable language-shaped reward functions generated by few-shot LLM prompting. When guided by a human teacher that issues instructions to follow, our method can generate novel, highly complex behaviors, such as aggressive lane weaving, which are not present in the training data. This allows us to solve the hardest nuPlan scenarios which are beyond the capabilities of existing trajectory optimization methods and driving policies.
TIC: Translate-Infer-Compile for accurate "text to plan" using LLMs and Logical Representations
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2024
Year: 2024

We study the problem of generating plans for given natural language planning task requests. On one hand, LLMs excel at natural language processing but do not perform well on planning. On the other hand, classical planning tools excel at planning tasks but require input in a structured language such as the Planning Domain Definition Language (PDDL). We leverage the strengths of both the techniques by using an LLM for generating the PDDL representation (task PDDL) of planning task requests followed by using a classical planner for computing a plan. Unlike previous approaches that use LLMs for generating task PDDLs directly, our approach comprises of (a) translate: using an LLM only for generating a logically interpretable intermediate representation of natural language task description, (b) infer: deriving additional logically dependent information from the intermediate representation using a logic reasoner (currently, Answer Set Programming solver), and (c) compile: generating the target task PDDL from the base and inferred information. We observe that using an LLM to only output the intermediate representation significantly reduces LLM errors. Consequently, TIC approach achieves, for at least one LLM, high accuracy on task PDDL generation for all seven domains of our evaluation dataset.